


In Sickness and Health

by khazadqueen (ama)



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Established Relationship, M/M, Permanent Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 03:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/khazadqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three weeks after Bifur was injured, Oin is still uncharacteristically optimistic. Gloin just wants to make sure his brother will be okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Sickness and Health

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a tumblr prompt from macavitythemysterycat, who asked for the moment Oin realizes that Bifur is never going to be back to his old self. I got lots of info on the actual medical impact of Bifur's injury from asktheoakenshieldbros, also on tumblr.
> 
> This is the first time in a while I've had a pairing with natural endearments, and I quite like it; Oin uses "love" and Bifur uses the Khuzdul word for "sun[-man]," translated more loosely as "sunshine."

Gloin paced outside his brother’s shed anxiously, and tried again to arrange words properly in his mind. It was no use; he had spent the last two days or more trying to figure out what Oin needed to hear, and how he needed to hear it, and he was no closer than he had been three weeks ago. The day that his brother’s husband had come home from a routine hunt with an Orcish axe embedded in his skull.

“Not that one, Bifur!” Oin roared suddenly, the wooden door doing little to mask the sound. “No, love, that one’s not for eating. You know it, it’s belladonna… yes, see, I knew you’d remember. Dear, dear, shaved twenty years off my life with that one. Enough for one day, I think; come, let’s go home.”

That was Gloin’s cue. He stopped pacing and rapped smartly on the door. Bifur answered it and clapped Gloin on the shoulder; he nearly pulled him in for a head-butt, but Gloin swooped low enough to avoid it.

“I think that particular greeting is lost to you, brother,” he said, as cheerfully as he could. “Unless you mean it to be deadly!”

Bifur patted him on the shoulder a few more times, and began to wander out into the chill night air. Gloin watched him anxiously. Bifur was perfectly capable of walking and navigating their little settlement, but his impulse control had been either damaged or destroyed by the axe, depending on who you asked. At best, this merely emphasized Bifur’s natural cheerful disposition, as he was more inclined to offer hugs and friendly touches. At worst, his temper seemed shorter than usual, he occasionally tried to leap down the mountain paths rather than spare the time to walk… and, apparently, he thought belladonna as edible as dandelions.

“Evening, brother,” Oin said as he emerged from the workroom. He looked tired, but cautiously optimistic, the way he had looked for at least a week now. “Have you eaten?”

“Aye. Just popped by for a quick word, if ye’ve got the time.”

“Fine, fine—wait here, will you? Bifur’s tired enough to sleep right on the stairs, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Gloin waved his understanding and stepped into the workroom. Immediately, his nose wrinkled at the thick, pungent scent that wafted around him. Dried herbs and flowers hung from the ceiling, and the table was strewn with open bottles of oils and creams. The smell alone was enough to wake the dead, he thought grimly. A moon calendar was stuffed under a pile of dying roses, and beside them was a leather bag that contained unfinished gems, carved with symbols, that Oin sometimes used for soothsaying. Mostly he dealt with dreams and winds and the paths of birds and the like, but he kept the gems because he said that they told truest the fortune of dwarves. With this kind of thing, it was never good to know _too_ much, but he was loath to throw them away.

The banker frowned as he prodded the bag, and wondered if Oin had been consulting them lately.

“Now then, nadadith,” Oin said, clapping his gloved hands as he entered. “What’s caught your attention? Ach, forgive the wretched mess.”

Gloin took a deep breath as his brother busied himself around the table, popping corks into bottles and stuffing the flowers into wooden shelves. The rune-gems were shoved unceremoniously behind the roses in their little box.

“It’s Bifur, Oin,” he said. The words sounded rushed, and he cleared his throat. “He—has he been improving?”

“Well enough,” Oin said slowly. He picked up a mortar and pestle, both of which were still coated in dirty-yellow crystals, and dumped their contents on the ground before secreting them in a low cabinet. He continued to rustle in the cabinet, hiding his face as he spoke. “Not in ways most people would notice, I should think. The wound itself is as well as could ever be dreamed, and his recall time is quickening, and his memory is fine—I don’t think there will be permanent damage, like we worried at first. That was probably a temporary result of the wound and the shock.”

“Oin,” Gloin said, his heart sinking. “You’ve told me all this, near a week ago.”

Oin straightened and pushed past him with a huff to tend to his pots and bottles again.

“So?” he asked aggressively.

“So _lately_ he doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”

“Of course he hasn’t! There’s a bleedin’ axe in his skull! These things take time, Gloin, time and careful tending—”

“And then—what?” Goin interrupted, gentle as he could be. “After all that time, what do you expect? You said it yourself, the wound can’t be healed, and Bifur can’t be the same at the end of it all. You _must_ know that.”

Oin’s hand shook as he set the pots in his hand on the table. He bowed his head. Gloin let him have a moment, and then he stepped forward and put his arm around his brother’s back. Oin was trembling, just slightly, and there were tears in his voice when he spoke. Gloin’s heart near about broke.

“What am I to say? My One—he’ll always be that, long as he’s living, and I won’t—I won’t leave ’im—”

“No one thinks you will, brother,” Gloin lied soothingly. “Not a one. You’re made for healing and made for him, anyone can see that.”

Oin shook his head with a deep frown, and Gloin repeated himself louder. This time Oin heard, and the words seemed to comfort him—or at least calm him. He wiped impatiently at his eyes, and Gloin smoothed a rough hand over his top braid.

“I didnae mean to upset you,” he muttered. “It’s just—I was worried about you. You seemed so damn _cheerful_. Unnatural-like. And I thought that, if you were expecting Bifur to jump up one morning and be himself again, and the years stretched on without that happening… I thought it might kill you.”

He thought of Gimli and Kara, and shuddered.

“He _is_ himself, still,” Oin argued. “That’s the worst bit. I thought I had lost him twice—first, to death, or then to madness. But no, I can see _him,_ all his love and anger and pain clear as day on his face. He’s not lost his wits, Gloin, he’s lost his _control_. And my fear is that, if he doesn’t get it back, I’ll lose him for good. He always had such a happy way about him, but if he’s all eaten up by frustration and anger… I can’t let it happen. My beard’ll fall right off my face before I let it.”

“You’ll never lose that,” Gloin said solemnly. He drew back a few inches and clasped his brother by the shoulder, looking him straight in the eye. “I tell you true: Bifur is too damn stubborn to lose himself completely. By Durin’s beard, haven’t you known him as long as I? He could walk through a hurricane and all it would do is muss up his hair a mite bit more.”

“If it were possible,” Oin muttered with a weak smile.

“I don’t want you to lose hope, brother. But if he growls a bit more, or needs more minding then you’d expect, or never gets past Iglishmek… I want you to be ready. And I want you to _talk_ to me, you hard-headed bastard. You’re as strong a dwarf as any I know, and there’s no shame in relying on your kin.”

Oin snorted and shrugged off Gloin’s hand.

“Some dwarrows ought never to become fathers. You’ve always been the meddling sort, and that lad of yours only made it worse!”

“And you’re complaining just as much as a forty-year-old, which ought to tell you something.”

“Off with you,” Oin grunted. He tapped their foreheads together lightly and tugged a lock of Gloin’s hair in the exact way he always did, which Gloin _hated_. Older siblings—pah. “Thank you, nadadith.”

“Weren’t nothing,” Gloin said gruffly as they left the work shed. “Kara says to remind you to eat, and at our table if you want.”

“We’ll pop by tomorrow evening,” the apothecary promised, and the brothers parted. Gloin shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked away with a lighter heart than he had come with.

After a few minutes of peaceful solitude in the darkness, Oin turned and went into his own house. It was a small one; until a few years ago, he had lived with his brother and his wife, like many Dwarves, but he and Bifur had agreed it was best to have their own home. Between the two of them, they had more than enough cousins and nieces and nephews who might want to come visiting, and their house now had space to accommodate at least a fraction of those—even if some might have to sit on the floor. His hand rose, out of habit, to rub the carvings on the mantle as he passed through. Bifur’s work, a glorious mesh of a hundred kinds of flowers and birds and bold, geometric dwarven patterns.

He ducked quietly into their bedchamber and stripped down to his nightclothes. Just as he was getting into bed, Bifur stirred beneath the blankets.

“Ûrzudûn?”

“Go to sleep, love,” he murmured automatically, reaching out to smooth his fingers over one of Bifur’s braids. Then he froze. “Bifur—Bifur, love, did you just speak? Oh blessed Maker—”

“Ûrzudûn,” Bifur repeated. His voice was rough and sleepy, and he rolled onto his side. The half-moon filtered dimly through their window, and Oin could just barely see his fingers form slow Iglishmek. _Yes_. _Difficult_.

“There’s a bleedin’ axe in your head, of course it’s difficult,” Oin chuckled, and there were tears in his eyes.

He lay down and wrapped his arms around Bifur, squeezing him tight. Aye, Bifur had changed, and he would not be the same dwarf he once was. But he was alive and he was here, and he was his One. _Blessed Maker_ , Oin thought again as he wept with gladness, and Bifur held him close.


End file.
